Doctor Luan
by MrTyeDye
Summary: After Lana takes a nasty fall, Luan takes it upon herself to nurse her back to health - teaching her a thing or two about the rigors of clowning in the process.


"...so then the hedgehog says to the rabbi..."

Luan liked to spend many an afternoon yammering on the phone with her not-so-secret crush, Benny. The two of them would spend hours exchanging jokes and gauging each others' reactions. She usually took her calls in her room, but since Luna was using their shared bedroom to practice her drums, Luan had to migrate downstairs to the living room. On the positive side, this gave her the excuse to monopolize the easy chair - hands down the comfiest piece of furniture in the house. On the negative side, taking her call in the living room meant risking the occasional errant interruption, like an incoming football from Lynn, a chemical explosion from Lisa...

"OWWWWW!"

...or, in this case, a blood-curdling scream from Lana, coming from the backyard.

With her big sister instincts activated, Luan cut her joke short, bid Benny goodbye with a quick, "Let me call you back", and sprinted into the backyard to see what was the matter. She saw Lana lying at the foot of the tree, screaming and clutching her ankle.

"Lana, what happened?" she asked, her voice sharp and anxious. "What's wrong?"

"I-I-I fell out of the tree!" cried Lana, as tears started to sprout from her eyes.

Luan gasped. "Oh, no! What hurts?"

"My ankle!"

As Lana continued to writhe in pain, Luan crouched down to her level, carefully prying her hands away from her ankle. As she suspected, the area she was clutching was inflamed and swollen. Luan breathed a soft sigh of relief, as she had expected the injury to be much worse than it was.

"I-is it broken?!" cried Lana.

"I think it's just sprained," said Luan.

Lana tried to force herself back onto her feet, only to be stopped by Luan.

"Hold on, now," she said. "I gotcha."

Luan tucked her arms underneath Lana and hefted her up, grunting from the effort.

"Oof! You're getting heavy."

As Luan carried her little sister into the house, Lana's shrieks of pain started to peter out. By the time they arrived at the living room couch, her cries had shrunk into gentle whimpers.

"Just wait right there and I'll get you some ice," Luan said, laying Lana down on the couch.

"I-ice? What for?" asked Lana.

"It'll help keep down the swelling," said Luan. She took a moment to wipe Lana's eyes dry before doing an about-face and walking into the kitchen.

She returned in short order with a bag of ice, which she carefully pressed against Lana's ankle. The chill of the ice pack made Lana shiver a bit, but that subsided after a second. Shock gave way to relief, as the icy sensation spread across her skin and numbed her to the pain.

"There we go," said Luan. "Just keep it like that for a little bit. I'll get you some Advil."

Lana complied, keeping the ice pressed against her ankle as Luan headed upstairs to the medicine cabinet. Whenever she felt the pain starting to resurge, she tightened her grip on the ice, sending a wave of comfort rippling throughout her body.

Before long, Luan came back down the stairs, with a glass of water in one hand and a bottle of pills in the other.

"Is the ice helping?" she asked.

"It sure is!" said Lana, cracking a smile. "How'd you know that would work?"

"Well, see, when you put ice on something, it-

"No, I mean, where'd you learn it?"

Luan smiled to herself, as she spied an opportunity to teach Lana a thing or two about her favorite hobby.

"Oh, you know," she said, in a tone as blasé as she could manage, "it's just the kind of thing I had to learn, you know... doing what I do."

Lana raised an eyebrow at her. "But you're a clown."

"Exactly!" chirped Luan.

"...I don't follow."

By now, Luan's internal smile had found its way onto her face. "You don't think clowning is dangerous?" she asked. "How many times have you seen me take a bad fall on stage?"

"A lot, but... that's all fake, isn't it?" asked Lana, scratching her head with her free hand.

"Well, it is and it isn't," said Luan. "The line between 'real' and 'fake' is _very_ thin. It takes a lot of practice to fake getting hurt without actually getting hurt. Between pratfalls, juggling and unicycle rides, there's a lot of risk for injury. Here, let me show you."

Luan set the pills and the water down on the coffee table, before taking off in a dead sprint towards the wall. In a stunt that made Lana's jaw drop, the young comedienne ran up the wall, flipped in midair and stuck a perfect landing. Before Lana got over the shock, Luan took off in another sprint towards the opposite wall. This time, she hit the wall face-first with a bang, and collapsed onto the floor a split second later, leaving Lana cackling with glee. Luan took her time picking herself up off the floor and waiting for Lana to compose herself.

"I cracked my head more times than I can count practicing that move," she said as she walked back towards the couch.

"Yeah, I'll bet," said Lana.

"And since I usually practice alone, I had to teach myself how to fix myself up when I got hurt. You see?"

Lana pursed her lips together in thought as she mulled over what Luan told her. Prior to the conversation, she never would have used adjectives like "demanding" and "risky" to describe clowning. But after seeing a stunt like the one Luan just pulled, how could she not?

"I see," she said with a nod.

Luan's face firmed up as she approached Lana and knelt down at her side. _Okay, I've had my fun_ , she thought. _Time to go into big sister mode._

"Speaking of which, what were you doing climbing that tree, anyway?" she asked.

A tinge of guilt could be seen in Lana's eyes. "Well, like, me and Lola were playing in the yard, and we saw that Cliff was stuck in the tree, so I, uh, tried to climb it up and get him down."

Luan furrowed her brow. "Lana, you know that's dangerous. You should've gone inside and told me, or Lori, or Dad. We would've known what to do."

"I know, I know, but Lola was there and I really wanted to impress her." Lana folded her arms and pouted a bit. "I wanted to be the hero."

A new smile tugged at the corners of Luan's mouth. "Tsk, tsk, tsk," she tutted, shaking her head. "Lana, Lana, Lana. Why go through the trouble of proving yourself a hero when you already _are_ one?"

Lana blinked. "Eh? When have I ever been a hero?"

"Lots of times!" exclaimed Luan. "I can't even count how many times you've unclogged our toilet, or fixed up Vanzilla."

"Yeah, but... but I do all that stuff in the bathroom, or the garage," said Lana, averting Luan's gaze. "It's not like I'm any place where people can see me."

Luan rolled her eyes, took off Lana's hat and started ruffling her hair, eliciting a giggle.

"Being a hero doesn't mean making a show out of it," she said. "What you do is _really_ important, even if you're not doing it in front of a crowd."

She slapped Lana's hat back onto her head.

"You're already our handywoman. Don't feel like you have to be our showwoman, too. Leave that stuff to Lola, Luna and me. Okay?"

Lana grinned and squirmed about, feeling a tinge of sheepishness mixed with a hefty dose of pride. "O-okay. I'll be good."

"Glad to hear it," said Luan, handing Lana the glass of water and an Advil. "Now take this."

Lana reached for the pill, but withdrew her hand at the last minute. "You know what's funny?" she asked. "My ankle doesn't even hurt that much anymore! I guess it just stopped hurting when I stopped thinking about it."

Luan flashed Lana a cheeky grin. "Well, you know what they say, Lana; the _pain_ in _sprain_ lays mainly in your _brain_."


End file.
